Many companies package groups of items together for a variety of purposes, such as e-commerce and mail order companies that package items (e.g., books, CDs, apparel, food, etc.) to be shipped to fulfill orders from customers. Retailers, wholesalers, and other product distributors (which may collectively be referred to as distributors) typically maintain an inventory of various items that may be ordered by clients or customers. This inventory may be maintained and processed at a materials handling facility which may include, but is not limited to, one or more of: warehouses, distribution centers, cross-docking facilities, order fulfillment facilities, packaging facilities, shipping facilities, or other facilities or combinations of facilities for performing one or more functions of material (inventory) handling.
However, shipments that include one or more unusually large items (e.g., large with respect to one or more item dimensions and/or item weight) can be difficult for a materials handling facility to process. They are often treated as exceptions because the infrastructure of the materials handling facility may not be designed to elegantly handle such items. To remedy this problem, some companies establish alternate materials handling facilities dedicated to preparing shipments of unusually large items. The infrastructure of such alternate materials handling facilities may be more suited to prepare shipments of unusually large items. A more traditional materials handling facility might rely heavily on automated or mechanized infrastructure that requires items to have certain characteristics (e.g., dimensional or weight restrictions). For example, such materials handling facilities might enforce dimensional constraints on items to ensure that the items will properly fit on a conveyance system (e.g., a cart or conveyor belt) within the facility. In contrast, an alternate materials handling facility might rely more heavily on manual or man-powered operations that require less stringent constraints on items within the facility.
In many cases, such alternate materials handling facilities are dedicated to fulfilling orders for one or more items in a non-sortable fashion. For instance, a given multiple-item order may be split up into single items for purposes of packaging and shipping. Typically, such a materials handling facility arrangement is chosen to increase simplicity and efficiency. For instance, by packaging and shipping orders as single item shipments, the burden of sorting multiple items into the same shipment (whether by automated or manual techniques) is removed from the facility.
While the system and method for selectively applying an item sortation process is described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that the system and method for selectively applying an item sortation process is not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the system and method for selectively applying an item sortation process to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the system and method for selectively applying an item sortation process as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.